For every 100 hardback and paperback book sold in UK, 114 ebooks are downloaded in 'reading renaissance'

A woman reading a Kindle ebook on a London bus. Amazon says downloads have overtaken print sales
A woman reading a Kindle ebook on a London bus. Amazon.co.uk says downloads have overtaken print book sales. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Amazon.co.uk has said that sales of its Kindle ebooks are now outstripping those of printed books.

Underlining the speed of change in the publishing industry, Amazon said that two years after introducing the Kindle, customers are now buying more ebooks than all hardcovers and paperbacks combined. According to unaudited figures released by the company on Monday, since the start of 2012, for every 100 hardback and paperback book sold on its site, customers downloaded 114 ebooks. Amazon said the figures included sales of printed books which did not have Kindle editions, but excluded free ebooks.

In a surprise move in May, the company went into partnership with the UK's largest bricks-and-mortar books retailer, Waterstones.

Much to the consternation of the publishing industry, Amazon has refused to release audited figures for its digital book sales, something it does for printed books. It told the Guardian that the company would not discuss future policy on the matter.

The company said its figures also showed that British Kindle users were buying four times as many books as they were prior to owning a Kindle, a trend it described as a renaissance of reading.
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Joe Smith - Had an Amazon account prior to buying a Kindle. Averaged 1 book purchase a month. After purchasing a Kindle and tying it to his account, his book purchasing habits went up to about 4 (e)books a month.

I guess that's one way to do it, anyhow. No clue if this was (one of) their methods to come up with these numbers or if they just used a modified version of the "jump to conclusions" board.

Joe Smith - Had an Amazon account prior to buying a Kindle. Averaged 1 book purchase a month. After purchasing a Kindle and tying it to his account, his book purchasing habits went up to about 4 (e)books a month.

According to internal Kobo data, 100% of sales are ebooks so the pbook is dead! They also noticed that nobody read books prior to the advent of ebooks, so their company is doing a tremendous service to society.

Based purely on anecdotal data taken from one single user - moi - I would say that those numbers are at least spot on, perhaps even a tad understated. Pre-eBooks I made something like three or four purchases a year from Amazon, around six or seven books at a time. That would total around 40 books a year. Including S&H I probably spent $500 per annum.

During 2011 I downloaded and paid for 147 digital titles and spent $738.68. And noo, I haven't read all of those yet, but they are all on the Kindle and catalogued in Calibre.

Joe Smith - Had an Amazon account prior to buying a Kindle. Averaged 1 book purchase a month. After purchasing a Kindle and tying it to his account, his book purchasing habits went up to about 4 (e)books a month.

I guess that's one way to do it, anyhow. No clue if this was (one of) their methods to come up with these numbers or if they just used a modified version of the "jump to conclusions" board.

That's probably how they're computing it, yes. In reality, though, it's "Had an Amazon account prior to buying a Kingle. Averaged 1 book purchase a month from Amazon, but could easily buy paper books anywhere else, like at the supermarket (which is a major sales channel for mass market paperbacks). Afer purchasing a Kindle and tying it to his account, went to about 4 books a month from Amazon."

The most that could really be said is that people who were already buying at least some books from Amazon in the first place have shifted to buying more ebooks from Amazon than they did before in paper books. Whether those are in addition to, or instead of, what they otherwise would have bought on paper, there's no way for Amazon to tell.